How To Run Changeling: The Dreaming
By
They are the children who fence with sticks and see dragons in the supermarket, the artists who always seem to have one foot in another world, the crazy old ladies who live in the crumbling house at the end of the street. They are people you know as family members, lovers, friends, but they are more than that. They are the fae, products of the Dreaming (an otherworldly realm created by the imaginations of mortals). They came to Earth to inspire the dreams and hopes of all humankind and subsist on the resulting Glamour, the creative energy that fuels their existence. But as humanity’s belief in the supernatural waned (an event known as the Shattering), the fae were forced to retreat to their ancestral homeland of Arcadia before it closed its doors to the physical world. Some were forced to stay behind, and survived by taking on human form and becoming changelings, faeries composed of equal parts of flesh and fantasy. Today, would-be changelings begin as everyday people who experience a moment of epiphany and transformation known as the Chrysalis, after which they gain the ability to see the chimerical reality unconsciously dreamed by mortals and the obligation to be a muse to humanity. They also enter a society in which they struggle both to maintain order within their own complex political system, and to prevent Banality (human disbelief in the fantastic) from destroying the dreams of mortals—and the fae themselves—for good.
Such This is the
basic premise of Changeling: The Dreaming, an intriguing game published
by White Wolf and set in the
“Gothic-punk” milieu that many gamers will recognize from Vampire,
Werewolf, and Mage. However,
it presents a somewhat lighter side of the World of Darkness and owes much more
to Grimm’s Fairy Tales
than it does to any horror writer.
(This is not to say that Changeling can’t be serious or dramatic
when Storytellers and players want it to be; Grimm’s
Fairy Tales were, after all, rather grim.) Changeling is a game about unusual
people who want to improve the lives of others by teaching them how to dream
again. It’s about the struggle to keep
imagination, hope, and a sense of wonder alive in a world that tells us to quit
wasting our time on silly stories and get a safe, predictable life. (Can’t all gamers relate to that?)
Changeling runs on the same “Storyteller” system as the
aforementioned World of Darkness games, with all its associated strengths and
weaknesses. (I’ll talk more
about this later.) It uses
ten-sided dice. Players divide
character creation points between nine basic Attributes (determining the
character’s basic physical, mental, and social stats) and a number of Abilities
defining specialized skills, all of which run on a scale of 1 to 5. Changelings come in a number of different kiths,
or basic “character classes””races” of
faeries, all with associated strengths and weaknesses. These include, among
others, the sidhe, the noble yet arrogant ruling class of the fae; the nockers,
who are foul-mouthed and socially inept yet possess a remarkable affinity for
repairing things and crafting chimerical items; the pooka, shapeshifting
tricksters who are also compulsive liars; the trolls, stoic, powerful
warriors with a profound sense of duty; the redcaps, nightmare creatures
who delight in spreading terror and mayhem and can eat quite literally
anything.
Each changeling also learns a number of magic spells called cantrips. The cantrip system is divided into two categories: Arts, which determine what your character can do (everything from confusing the perceptions of others to moving objects with their minds to sensing and affecting the destiny of others to leaping tall buildings in a single bound), and Realms, which determine who or what she can do it to (people, inanimate objects, plants, other changelings, and so forth). So if you wanted to move a person telekinetically, your character would need to know both the appropriate level of the Art (Legerdemain) and the proper Realm (Actor) to affect the target. This system is admittedly a little awkward; it may seem needlessly complicated at first glance, and takes some getting used to. However, once Storytellers and players alike take the time to read it through carefully and get past the first few casting attempts, it’s no longer an issue.
Changeling society is a very,
very complicated beast. It
is organized according to a feudal paradigm, with a strict division between
nobles and the commoners they rule. The
sidhe, who left for Arcadia during the Shattering and returned to Earth during
the Resurgence in 1969 (when the Glamour produced from the first moon
landing spontaneously threw open the gates of Arcadia), fought and won the Accordance
War against the commoners in the early 1970s, and now rule the rest of the commoner
fae. (All of these events took place
without the knowledge of mortals; like the supernatural beings of the other
World of Darkness games, changelings take great pains to keep their existence a
secret.) All changelings also belong to
one of two courts that dictates their beliefs and code of ethics. The Seelie court espouses the values
of tradition and honor, while the Unseelie court believes that change, the
more violent the betterviolent or otherwise, is always good. Add to that the existence of numerous noble
houses and secret societies, all with beliefs, goals, and political agendas of
their own, and you have what is (with the possible exception of Vampire’s
Machiavellian machinations) the most politically charged game out there. Seelie sidhe have near-complete control over
the magical areas known as freeholds, which produce the Glamour that all
changelings covet. But the Unseelie
members of the Shadow Court continue to work against them, and events in
recent Changeling supplements suggest that the feudal society may be
poised on the brink of another war between the sidhe and the commoners. Changeling’s setting and metaplot are
astonishingly involving—I can almost guarantee that you’ll never have trouble
finding plot hooks or interesting story ideas—but also so intricate as to be
daunting to new players. (And yes, like
all the World of Darkness games, you can run a perfectly good Changeling
campaign without involving any of the metaplot, but in my humble opinion it’s
so interesting that you’re really missing out if you ignore it.)
By the same token, both the greatest strength and weakness of Changeling is its scope and versatility. Changeling Storytellers have an incredibly vast array of potential stories and themes at their disposal. The game has an inherent sense of wonder that makes it very possible to run Changeling as a fun, light-hearted respite from more serious campaigns. If you’ve avoided the World of Darkness games because they’ve always seemed too dark and depressing, this game could change your mind. But Changeling is not, as many people assume, happy and fluffy all the time; the fae suffer the constant threat of being destroyed by Banality, which gives STs a convenient way to create a mood of desperate futility. Campaigns can easily be silly, surreal, dark, dramatic, or all of these things at once. And, as mentioned before, Changeling provides a well-realized political environment found in few other games. But the presence of so many options can also be overwhelming. A common mistake new Changeling STs make is throwing in too many aspects of the game too soon, until they end up juggling more disparate factors than one chronicle can handle. When starting out, it’s better to pick one theme or mood and stick with it until you and your players have mastered the game.
The World of Darkness gaming system itself can be another source of problems. While it’s a very simple system for both players and STs to master, the relative lack of checks and balances also makes it very easy to create overpowered “munchkin” characters that unbalance a game. Storytellers should be on the lookout for players who try to raise their combat stats to exorbitant levels or start out with too many special abilities; I’ve avoided this by not allowing my players to start with their characters’ Abilities or Arts above 3. Also, the point of the World of Darkness system is to create an immersive game world (at which it succeeds admirably), not account for every battlefield contingency, but people new to the system sometimes forget this. If you’re looking for ultra-realistic combat, Changeling is probably not the place to go.
I have been running an ongoing Changeling chronicle since early this year. My players started out in Hollywood, where a somewhat quixotic noble befriended them and convinced them to infiltrate the set of a movie (which, truth be told, was a very thinly disguised version of Harry Potter) that she believed would become a major source of Banality unless they intervened. (This also taught them about sidhe politics the hard way when their “alliance” with the noble sucked them into a conflict with the duke of Los Angeles.) At first they planned on sabotaging the production outright, but when they figured out that destroying art (even bad art) would create even more Banality than allowing it to exist, they began acting as muses to the director, actors, and major crew members of the movie. The characters got some Glamour, the movie turned out well, and everyone went home happy—until the characters came across a treasure map and set out on a cross-country odyssey in search of fame and fortune. My chronicle has flirted with a lot of moods and themes since it began, but has settled down as a relatively light-hearted story about helping mortals and changelings alike to realize their dreams.
While
Changeling isn’t a perfect gamehas its flaws,
its concept and themes make it unique enough that once you sit back and enjoy
the sheer magic of its setting, you become so fascinated that you really
don’t mind anymorerealize that the flaws aren’t important. If you long for an RPG that combines the
playfulness of imaginative childhood games with the high drama you’ve come to
expect from the World of Darkness, Changeling is most definitely the
game for you.
Want to learn more about Changeling:
The Dreaming? Click here!
Changeling: The Dreaming and all associated terms are property of White Wolf Game Studio
and this article is not intended as a challenge to these or any other
copyrights.